


Inevitable Connections

by maat_seshat



Category: Starfire Series - Various Authors
Genre: Family by Oath, Family confrontation, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:59:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maat_seshat/pseuds/maat_seshat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Welcome to the <i>Valkha'zeeranda</i> Imperial Treasure Museum, Fang Prescott."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inevitable Connections

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Trobadora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/gifts).



Zhaarnak grew distinctly fidgety as their ground car approached the museum. It wasn't anything overt; he seemed perfectly content to twit Prescott over his failure to reach _Valkha'zeeranda_ before this formal visit at the head of a Human military and diplomatic delegation. _They were a busy few years_ , Prescott reminded himself guiltily, but Zhaarnak clearly knew that, since his teasing held no edge of hurt. 

His body language was twitchy, though, ears swiveling with no perceptible meaning and jumpy as a new ensign. Either he wanted to say something and didn't think he should, or he didn't want to say something but thought he really should. Prescott flicked a glance out the window and matched it to the map of the capitol's surrounding area that he had studied. He would be surprised if the ride lasted more than five minutes longer. If Zhaarnak planned to say anything, he needed to say it soon. 

"There is a significant chance that my father will be at the tour today," Zhaarnak confessed abruptly. "I have attempted to convince him that a first meeting between family should be private and perhaps I have, but you should be prepared lest he decide that the benefits of a public meeting outweigh the courtesy of a private one."

Prescott closed his eyes with a sigh. "I see." He opened them. "Well, we knew that this would be as much a test as a cultural welcome."

"You are far past tests," Zhaarnak said fiercely. "You have proven yourself more times than they can count, and if they are such fools that they cannot see that, then they are the ones who are shamed." He slumped. "It is only that he is my father and that gives him a standing that others of like mind no longer have."

Prescott nodded. "And one should never give up on family unless they have done the truly unforgivable, which a few obnoxious statements are not." He leaned forward to grasp Zhaarnak's hand, careful of the claws. "I understand. You of all people know I am perfectly capable of holding my temper."

Zhaarnak managed a half-smile at that. "I do not know that I am, brother."

Prescott smiled back. "Trust me to know my part, and I will trust you to extend your claws only when they are needed. Is that enough?"

"A plan to go forward with," Zhaarnak allowed.

They both straightened in their seats as they felt the subtle pressure of the ground car slowing. Prescott flashed a teeth-baring grin at his _vilkshatha_ brother, grateful that they were alone in the car and he could spare the blatantly aggressive and tension-lifting gesture. Zhaarnak grinned back, fangs sharp, moments before the door opened to allow them out.

The formalities in front of the museum passed quickly in a reasonably smooth combination of Human and Orion ceremony, played out before the artificial click of camera shutters that discreetly warned everyone they were being photographed. The museum had declined to invite any reporters into the actual galleries, but this choreographed welcome at the entrance would be matched by a slightly less regimented mingling afterwards, to which the cameras were also invited. As a compromise, Prescott could respect it entirely; as the minefield he had to navigate, he regarded it with a more jaundiced eye.

He stepped through his paces, though, accepting introductions to dignitaries whose names he committed to memory and set aside, and hiding his sigh of relief when he and Zhaarnak were finally bundled off in the company of their guides for the day. The first, a black-furred Least Claw, Keeraaht'maairtha, seemed barely half Prescott's age, while the second, a grey and tan tabby-striped civilian Curator of Old Valkha Relics named Anaasaal'jiloth, had fur tips were dusted with white. Prescott felt a stir of amusement at the contrast and allowed himself to be shepherded into the museum proper.

Inside the first gallery waited a russet-furred Orion. Prescott met his gaze and found himself extraordinarily grateful that the museum had decided to send its guests through in small groups that spared him any audience outside of their two guides and Zhaarnak himself, because the Orion before him bore far too much physical resemblance to Zhaarnak to be anything other than his father. 

He wore the fine _zeget_ -hide harness of a civilian clan head, rather than the rank harness to which he was entitled as a former naval officer, which left Prescott in an etiquette dilemma: the older Orion was no longer Zhaarnak's clan head, so he was certainly not Prescott's and the semi-military greeting of serving officer to his own clan head would not apply. Unfortunately, serving officers were bound to recognize only their own clan head, a relic of the compromise that the Khanate military had brokered to get high clan warriors into the unified military. Except with the one and only clan head who could call upon their loyalty, soldiers in general and officers in particular stood outside the civilian hierarchy, and clad in a military uniform, addressed by an Orion military title, Prescott was required to act within its rules.

The alternative, a generic courtesy greeting to an elder, was little better, insultingly chilly to someone who was, after all, family. Had he ever met said elder before, he could have used a more personal greeting instead of the formality of introductions, but as they stood now his choices were unpalatable. _This is why complex family introductions happen in private, or at the very least when no one is in military uniform and stuck with pre-space formality that everyone else has dropped,_ he thought, irritated. _We should have anticipated this._ Zhaarnak fulminated at his right hand, but his own uniform bound him just as tightly.

Just as Prescott had decided that there was no option but to offer Zhaarnak's father the mild insult that he was deliberately courting, Anaasaal projected her voice over the space between them. " _Khanhaku_ Diaano," she greeted. "Are you here to tour with your son and his _vilkshatha_ brother?" She turned to Prescott with a deliberate smile that made him suspect she knew exactly what she was disrupting. " _Khanhaku_ Diaano is a notable commentator on the Old Valkha treasures that I hope to introduce to you today."

Her ostentatiously blithe assumption that they had met before gave Prescott the opening he needed. "It is good to see the man whom my brother respects so much," he greeted with a bow, a delicate line that could as easily suggest a long separation as a first meeting. It was something of a lie as well, of course, but not one that Zhaarnak's father could call him on without destroying significant amounts of political capital.

By the twitch of his ear, _Khanhaku_ Diaano had noticed that. "It is equally good to have a chance to know the man with whom my son served for so long," he replied smoothly. He continued with no trace of Zhaarnak's gentle teasing in his tone, and Prescott nearly blinked at the heavy-handed insult that swept aside the social fiction his own greeting had suggested. "I would have enjoyed getting to know you earlier," Diaano said, "but I understand this is your first visit to _Valkha'zeeranda_."

"My first visit since meeting and swearing _vilkshatha_ with Zhaarnak, certainly," Prescott agreed mildly. He shifted almost imperceptibly to the side to try to quell Zhaarnak's rising tension. It didn't work, but Anaasaal took the opportunity to start them walking again. Good. They wouldn't have other groups tripping over them from behind. "I doubt our paths would have had occasion to cross during my time here as a child."

"As I told you, father," Zhaarnak ground out, "Raaymmonnd's parents were posted to the _hirikrinzi_ delegation when he was young." No one was paying the introductory works of this first gallery the attention they deserved, though both Keeraaht and Anaasaal were pointedly avoiding looking at any of their guests.

"Ah, yes, the ambassadorial delegation." Diaano took no notice of the fur that was beginning to bristle around his son's face, nor of the not-quite-hidden discomfort in Least Claw Keeraaht's posture. 

Prescott smiled gently. "The _hirikrinzi_ delegation, actually," he corrected. "Zhaarnak was precise; my parents were assigned for a diplomatic tour about ten years after the Theban war, by which point the _Khan'a'khanaaeee_ had declared Francis Mulrooney oath-sworn to _hirikrinzi_ , and he did not leave for another five years after we did."

"A good time to visit _Valkha'zeeranda_ ," Diaano observed.

"It was," Prescott agreed. The tension in the air did not dissipate, but it breathed a little, at least, and Anaasaal seized the moment to introduce a well-known painting, a change of subject that Keeraaht grasped with alacrity. The unposed portrait was one of the earliest examples of New Valkha's growing civilian independence, a cultural movement that had asserted the ability of society to have art and beauty independent of the warrior code that had gripped the last years prior to leaving Old Valkha with an iron hand. It was the beginning of the era of brilliant color that dominated painting for centuries, not as garishly bright as the works from the peak, but startling in the midst of much darker paintings. Both guides spoke knowledgeably, but neither had the emotional fire that would suggest a particular favorite. Which did at least make him feel better about not having more than a mild intellectual interest.

The tour continued, winding its way through galleries of defiantly bright paintings and equally brilliant ceramics from the civilian renaissance, a gut-punch of color even for someone whose eyes weren't on quite the spectrum their artists had known. Zhaarnak actually flinched at one of the rooms, and Prescott made a mental note to ask him whether the textured red of the buildings looked as much like blood to him as it did to Prescott, or whether Zhaarnak was reacting to a brightness in the reds that Prescott could not see. 

Everyone's interest picked up as the Old Valkha aesthetic began its resurgence. Prescott noted that while both Diaano and Keeraaht called the art a revival of Old Valkha culture without hesitation, Anaasaal resolutely, and more skeptically, continued to name it a passion for antiquity, despite her clear liking for the works themselves. Prescott wondered how much the antiquarianism of the New Old Valkha movement had fed back into the patriarchy that lingered in the military and the professional world. Zhaarnak listened with every indication of interest, but said nothing, either because he preferred to let the experts discuss their own field or because he preferred not to provoke his father on the topic. Probably both.

Finally, they reached a doorway, and a new and more pleasant tension curled through the air. 

"I am sure you wondered during our steady march forward in time when we would return to the ancient relics that I promised you," Anaasaal smiled, such as show-woman at that moment that it was easy to see she had done this many times before. "We have reached here the moment in time when our our Gormish _farshatok_ first developed the techniques to strip the artifacts of Old Valkha of the deadly biological weapon residue that clung to them and ventured into even regions of our old homeworld that we had believed lost forever. Behind this door is one of the first treasures they brought back to us."

She opened the door and led them in to where a black statue waited behind a nearly invisible, vacuum-sealed bubble of armorplast. The Orion depicted was half-crouched, ready to leap forward, but then Prescott blinked and, no, he was slumping to the ground, ready to drop his sword in despair. Prescott stepped forward one step and the statue was now frozen into a lookout's practiced readiness, a pose that an experienced warrior could hold for hours but also attack from in a moment. It was an ambiguity that no human statue could accomplish without abstraction, because the definition of human muscles would distinguish amongst the poses too clearly, but the Orion's fur softened the lines enough to permit it. " _Dirguasha_ with honor," Prescott breathed as he stepped forward once more to watch the statue change, kaleidoscopic, before his eyes.

"Cranaa'tolnatha is the most common interpretation." Diaano's challenge broke in on Prescott's reverie, and Prescott shook himself back to attention.

"Yet it lacks any markers that would clearly identify it as him, unless all of them were scraped away over its history. Nor was Cranaa of a high clan," he nodded to Keeraaht, "which makes the choice of black basalt surprising."

"A form of respect," Diaano countered, "to give him the pelt to accompany his courage. Nor is the basalt chosen only for its original black."

Prescott nodded. "Rust red as drying blood," he agreed, looking at the time-frozen splashes on the statue and flashing back upon the charnel-house flag bridges that had been his world only a few short years ago. "But basalt comes in lighter shades and the other forms rust as well. With the care taken to carve even the hairs of the pelt believably, hairs that survived the thousand years the statue sat untouched within an Old Valkha palace, it seems a disservice to the artist to assume he carelessly chose the color of his medium." He met the old _khanhaku_ 's eyes evenly, feeling Zhaarnak as steady at his shoulder as he had ever been in battle.

"And why would anyone memorialize an unnamed _dirguasha_?" Diaano snarled. The momentary, nearly invisible flinches of all three Orions in the room warned Prescott that his brother's father had lost even more control over his vocal cords than Prescott could hear with his limited ears. 

"Because not all those with honor are vindicated," Prescott said simply. "The reminder that someone can be cast out and despised and still carry their honor with them... It takes my breath away." He looked back at the statue. "Regardless of what the details of his choices were, the statue captures the essence of what he _is_ at that moment."

"An interesting interpretation, Fang Prescott," Keeraaht said into the silence. "Particularly coming from someone whose culture, if I may, has long prized the idea of success and judging by what works."

Prescott smiled slightly. "Well, one segment of Human culture does so, though I do grant that it is the one I inherited. But the idea of the individual who can judge what is right regardless of the pressures around him is just as fundamental to my particular family background." He enjoyed the frowns on the faces of every Orion but Zhaarnak. "So I come to this interpretation with reasoning perpendicular to that of the _Zheeerlikou'valkhannaiee_ who first put it forward."

Zhaarnak smiled broadly, lips coming just a hair short of baring his fangs. "You Humans are a confusing lot," he said, "as you once told me when I complained of your strangeness."

Prescott turned towards him, blocking the rest of them out for just a moment. "That I did."

Anaasaal cleared her throat. "Well, this marks the end of our tour. Please enjoy the rest of this room as long as you wish, and when other groups reach us we can exit to the reception room with its refreshments." She gave Prescott a small nod and promptly turned to engage _Khanhaku_ Diaano, drawing the weight of his glare off of Prescott, who sighed a little with relief. He turned to Zhaarnak.

"While they have your father distracted," Prescott murmured, low, in English, and designed to carry only to Zhaarnak's ear, "I've got a question."

Zhaarnak looked at him, surprised. "Of course I will answer if I can, but you must have notice I am not any more knowledgeable than you about most art."

Prescott shook his head slightly. "Not the art," he said. "Your father." Zhaarnak tensed. "I'm sure you told me at some point and I should remember, but, well, what is his _name_?"

Zhaarnak stared for one frozen moment and then laughed, loud and a touch hysterical, but mostly just amused. Prescott met the sharp look _Khanhaku_ Diaano shot them innocently but with no welcome at all, and let his brother lean, still laughing, on his shoulder.


End file.
